Getting People To Play Well

Augustman sits down with Rohan Mathur, the LEGO Group's Marketing Director of Southeast Asia, and learns that LEGO is more about people than it is about bricks

- SUFFIAN HAKIM

THE LEGO BTS DYNAMITE EXPERIENCE held recently was one of the more impressive Orchard Road activations, injecting colour and verve into the well-known shopping stretch. The experience led the way in combining the trendy and the creative in a single, glorious exhibition that has captured the public’s imagination. It got people dancing, shopping, and crafting with LEGO. Taking centre stage is the LEGO BTS Big Builds Stage, featuring 1.2-metre-tall LEGO minifigure forms of their favourite BTS members. The pop-up was done in partnership with the Singapore Tourism Board and the Orchard Road Business Association.

The LEGO BTS Dynamite Experience is particularly interesting because its conceptualisation did not begin with any employee of the LEGO Group. Nor did it begin with Korean superstars BTS or anyone in their management agency or record label. Instead, the pop-up, which attracted thousands of fans during its run, was birthed in LEGO Ideas (ideas.lego.com), a microsite that houses a digital community of passionate LEGO fans.

In the microsite, users get to submit ideas of LEGO Builds that they’ve created. There are some really cool ones, such as the pink house from the movie Coraline, the Italian Riviera and a fully motorised watermill. The ones that both LEGO and the LEGO Ideas community really love – get this – becomes an official LEGO product, and the creators get 1% of all global sales.